Tuesday, 14 August 2012

First, this story of Jesse Jackson Jr having been diagnosed now as Bipolar is an odd story. Presently, Mr Jackson is still in the running for his district race, against a Republican who might....at best...pull in thirty percent of the vote in a normal election. Every indicator shows that Mr Jackson will still continue to run.....probably win....and it's purely a question mark if he can physically stand in the House of the Representatives in 2013. They have yet to get to some clear point on Meds....to make him stable and discharge him from the mental facility. Even if he gets the right Meds....there's the question if he can stay clear of booze and stress, and continue working in DC. If I were a betting man, I'd say that Jesse Jackson Jr does return to the House....manages to show up forty percent of the time....and retires after the 2014 period.

Second, a number of news media guys have tried to explain the terrible woes of Medicare, if that terrible young punk Ryan shows up as VP. Curiously, none of them ever mention that $700 billion is scheduled to be yanked from Medicare anyway....via the new Health Care Law. Somewhere within ten years....Medicare would falter and need a massive infusion of cash or reorganization. Yet the news media folks pretend that it'll just continue on forever.

Third, another NCAA football episode is underway with Auburn University. One of the young signees....Reuben Foster....had shown a number of signals that he'd sign with the University of Alabama, then at the very last minute....flipped over to Auburn. To make it concrete....he kinda had a Auburn War Eagles emblem tattooed onto his arm (it's a sure sign of permanent intent, if you ask me). Luckily, this only involves the "intent", and not some illegal transcript deal....like the other kid. I'm guessing those University of Bama guys are upset about having this kid all but final-signed, and then things fall apart. Life in Bama is very dependent on NCAA football, if you haven't figured that out.

Fourth and final, thirty-eight thousand GM-built police cruisers are being immediately recalled. Something to do with the front-control arms of the car. So far, no injuries reported, but at least two accidents. Now, you would think that the GM guys would be awful thoughtful over the police cruisers because they would be driven at high speeds. My humble guess is that they just never did test the cars at the right level of use.

It's an odd report. The New York Post is reporting that CNN has sent it's network team out to Hollywood. They are apparently seeking reality show ideas and Hollywood types who'd be willing to appear fairly often. No one is saying much about where this leads to. I'm taking a pretty good guess that the marginal profit margin has them thinking of taking their news section and gutting half of it. You'd end up with eight to twelve hours a day.....of entertainment news.

How would this work? Well....you'd have live-crews chasing around ambulances in Hollywood to cut over live to a report of some half-wit Hollywood player who got into a fight. You'd have Hollywood drug and alcohol reports that somehow run for sixty minutes out of everyday. You'd have French models, German soccer players, and Japanese TV stars that start to appear as "news" on a daily basis.

Some Hollywood character would come on and have a semi-reality show where they send four overweight and washed-up ex-stars out on a physical and mental rehab effort, for thirty days at a time. You could have a reality show where five TV stars bring their pets and get training experience from Doctor Jimmy.

I'm guessing that Ted Turner is probably in great disagreement about this direction. I'm also guessing that a fair number of CNN viewers will be hostile to seeing eight hours a day of real news being cut out. The truth here is that they can only financially survive.....if they change into something else. They can't possibly blend themselves into Fox News-like vehicle, and there's just not much left except letting Hollywood sleep with them on a nightly basis. The positive here.....you get to keep filtering out various liberal causes when necessary and feeling good about the network surviving.

Will viewers stay? Will viewers be attracted? Well....that's another issue. Most folks can stand about thirty to sixty minutes a day of Hollywood-type news. It's fairly fake and to be honest.....you can only accept about half the stuff they say about Brittney Spears, the Kardishians, or Jennifer Lopez. Could you handle more than an hour a day? My humble guess is no.

This direction change will last two years and mark a major failure for CNN. Where they go from that point.....it's only a guess. Kinda of a sad way to fix your failures.....turning to Hollywood.

The three presidential campaign debates have now decided upon the moderators. Jim Lehrer from PBS will run the first presidential debate. The second debate is to be run by Candy Crowley, from CNN. And Bob Schieffer will run the third debate. Martha Raddatz, a ABC News expert on foreign affairs, will run the VP debate.

Most folks will agree that Jim Lehrer generally runs a pretty neutral operation. The rest? Well....it's never really neutral. So I'm kinda wondering what the intended results might be.

First, CNN is leaning on marginal profits and a significant number of viewers have left the network. A screw-up by Candy here and insulting the Republican candidate? It'd probably take the last few viewers from the network. My humble guess is that someone in the Romney campaign has figured the CNN failure here would take them totally out of picture.

Second, most folks will say that Bob Schieffer's attempts to slam Republican candidates over the past five years have been mostly failures. If a guy just listens to Bob's questions....it's a two-star slam at best....maybe good in 1978 but it just doesn't work any longer. As Bob tosses out these poor slams....I suspect that it'll be slammed out of the park.

Third and final, the VP debate? As long as the entire debate can be kept to general questions on foreign affairs....VP Joe might slug out some singles, and keep the Ryan kid on the ropes. I'm just hoping they don't mention Mongolia and VP Joe offers his wit and wisdom on those evil Mongols.

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.